There are things worse than war

2024 Author: Matthew Elmers | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 21:49

Memories of an evacuation hospital nurse

"I was terribly sorry for the people." Lyudmila Ivanovna Grigorieva worked as a nurse in Moscow evacuation hospitals throughout the war. She talks about this time with professional restraint. And she begins to cry when she remembers what happened in her life before and after the war.

Lyudmila Ivanovna has a strange recollection of the very beginning, she has never read about it anywhere. As if on the night of Sunday, June 22, there was a glow in the sky over Moscow, as if everything was engulfed in flames. She also remembers that when Molotov spoke on the radio, his voice trembled. “But somehow people didn’t go shopping very well. He said: don't worry, don't panic, we have food over our heads. Everything will be fine, the victory will be ours."

Nowhere to run

In 1941, Lyala, as she was then called, was 15 years old. Schools were occupied by hospitals, and at the end of September she went to enter the medical school at the Dzerzhinsky hospital. “On the 16th my friend and I came to class, and the secretary sits in a coat and says to us: 'Run! All are fleeing from Moscow. " Well, my mother and I had nowhere to run: where my mother worked, there was no organized evacuation. And that the Germans would come - we were not afraid, such a thought did not arise. " She took the documents from the secretary and went to Spiridonovka, to the medical school at the Filatov hospital. “Accept, I say, to study me. And the director looks at me and cannot understand in any way: "You have only 6 classes". It's true, there were only 6 classes. I was very sick as a child. She was so dead, no words. It's a shame to say, but already as a student, I played with dolls. But I had a desire - to become a doctor. I say: "You take me, I can handle it." They accepted me. " In addition to Lyalya, there were three more families in the communal apartment with her mother and brother. “Mom bakes pies - a pie for all the guys. Vorobyova makes pancakes - everyone has a pancake. Of course, there were minor quarrels. But they were reconciled. " And on that day, October 16, returning home, Lyalya saw that at the Petrovsky Gate - now there is a restaurant, and then there was a grocery store - they are giving butter on ration cards. “I got 600 kilos of butter. Mom gasped: “Where did you get it?” And our neighbors, Citrons, were leaving. Mom divides this oil in half - she gives them to us. Polina Anatolyevna gasped: “What are you doing? You yourself do not know how you stay. " Mom says: “Nothing. We are still in Moscow, and where are you going …"

The wounded and those who took care of them in the Moscow evacuation hospital No. 3359. April 20, 1945. Lyalya - second from the right

1941 was the most difficult year. There is no heat or electricity in the houses. In winter, the temperature in the apartment is freezing, the toilet was boarded up so that no one could go. “We ran to Fight Square, there was a city lavatory. God, what was going on there! Then my father's friend came and brought the stove. We had a "morgasik" - a vial with a wick. In the bubble it is good if there is kerosene, and so - what is horrible. Little, little light! The only joy we girls had was when we came to the hospital (they were not always allowed to go there): we would sit by the battery, sit, and warm ourselves. We studied in the basement because the bombing had already begun. It was a pleasure to be on duty in hospitals and hospitals because it was warm there."

Sawmill brigade

From their group of 18 people in 10 months, to graduation (there was an accelerated training), there were 11. They were assigned to hospitals. Only one, who was older, was sent to the front. Lyudmila ended up in evacuation hospital No. 3372 on Trifonovskaya. The hospital was neurological, mainly for shell-shocked people. The work for white and black was not very much divided, the nurses had to not only give injections and massage, but also feed and wash. “We lived in a barracks position - you work for a day, for a day at home. Well, not at home, they didn't let me go home - on the 4th floor we each had a bed. I was active, and our Ivan Vasilyevich Strelchuk, the head of the hospital, appointed me the foreman of the sawmill brigade. I work for a day, and for the second day Abram Mikhailovich and I, we were such a good guy, were sawing firewood. And there are two more people with us, I don't remember them very much. They also brought in coal, unloaded it in buckets, after which they came out black as blacks.

Poklonnaya Mountain. May 9, 2000. In 2000, Lyudmila Ivanovna (left) took part in the parade on Red Square. Director Tofik Shakhverdiev made a documentary film "March of Victory" about the rehearsal of this parade and its veteran participants

Then Lyudmila left this hospital - after Doctor Vera Vasilievna Umanskaya, who took care of her, they then became friends all their lives. Hospital No. 3359 was a surgical hospital, where Lyudmila had already become a gypsum technician, applied bandages, learned how to do intravenous anesthesia, and injected hexenal. In the surgical area, the worst thing was gas gangrene, when the wounded's limbs swelled up, and only amputation could stop this. Antibiotics appeared only at the end of the war. “Bandages, drinking plenty of fluids and aspirin - there was nothing else. It was incredible to feel sorry for them. You know, when they showed the wounded in Chechnya, I could not watch."

Deadly romance

Lyudmila Ivanovna, in her 83 years old, is slender and beautiful with a noble beauty that does not know age, and in her youth she was a big-eyed fair-haired blonde. She bypasses the novel theme, but it is clear that the wounded singled her out, someone fell in love with her, she liked one herself, after the hospital he again went to the front and died near Rzhev. Mikhail Vasilyevich Reut - as she calls him by his full name. The girl's disposition was strict, the men apparently felt it and did not allow themselves anything. “My grandmother told me: 'Take care of the lower eye more than the upper one.' I married a girl when I was thirty. " She felt sorry for the wounded, and they treated her well. “During the shift, it was under no circumstances allowed to sleep. I had a sick Calkin, he used to refer me to his bed - it was in the far corner: “Get on your knees and sleep, and I'll be at the table. I will let you know who is going to go, and you seem to be adjusting the bed. " You see, so many years have passed, but I remember him. " But her most important hospital romance was not a love affair, but some kind of literary, mystical, even if you shoot a movie - about Kolya Panchenko, whom she nursed and could not come out. And so, apparently, this turned her soul upside down, that she decided to bury him herself, so that he would not end up in a common grave and his name would not be lost, as thousands of names of other deceased were lost in hospitals. And she buried her - with her half-childish hands, on one willpower, on stubbornness. A funeral service in a church, a visionary dream, a night escape to a cemetery, a betrayal of loved ones, a reburial after the war, when she, like Hamlet, held Colin's skull in her hands … I saw Kolino's name on the memorial plaque of the Pyatnitsky cemetery. “I don’t know what pushed me then - and I was not in love with him, he had a bride, he showed me a photo. He was from the Kuban, from the dispossessed, his father was exiled, there only remained his mother, sister and niece. I corresponded with them, probably, a year before 1946 …"

Real fears

A person rather ironic than sentimental, Lyudmila Ivanovna nevertheless cries several times during the story. But not about the war - "about life." Such was the life of our old people that the war in it was not always the most terrible test.

After the war, Lyudmila worked for ten years at the Filatovskaya Children's Hospital as a senior operating nurse. He tells with horror how the children had to do bougie. Now we have no idea what it is, but then there was just trouble. The people had nothing, and the rats were bred apparently invisibly, they were poisoned with caustic soda. And of course the children were poisoned. Enough crumbs - and a sharp narrowing of the esophagus began. And these unfortunate children were given a tube to widen the esophagus. And if it didn't work out, they put on an artificial one. The operation lasted 4-5 hours. Anesthesia is primitive: an iron mask, chloroform is given there so that the child does not suffer so much, and then ether begins to drip. “Only Elena Gavrilovna Dubeykovskaya did this operation, and only during my watch. I had to go through all this”.

Many family misfortunes have also been experienced. In 1937, her grandfather was arrested in front of her. “When the grandfather was taken away, he said: 'Sasha (this is my grandmother), give me 10 kopecks,' and the man to him: 'You won't need it, grandfather. You will live for free. Uncle was also arrested a day later. They later met at the Lubyanka. Grandfather was taken in August, and in October-November he died. My father disappeared before the war - he was taken away right at work. In 1949, it was the mother's turn.

“Well, I got my mother in 1952. I went to her in Siberia. Suslovo station, outside Novosibirsk. I went out - there is a huge composition, - then Lyudmila Ivanovna begins to cry uncontrollably. - Lattices, from there hands stick out - and throw letters. I see soldiers coming. The muzzles are creepy. With pistols. And the dogs. Mat … indescribable. “Go away! I'll shoot you now, dog! “It's me. I have collected several letters. He kicked me …"

How I got to my mother's camp, what I saw there and how I came back - another unwritten novel. She said to her mother: "I will definitely procure you." In Moscow, Lyudmila made her way * N. M. Shvernik in 1946-1953 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

to Shvernik. * * N. M. Shvernik in 1946-1953 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. “They put us in a row. Documents in front of you. "Question?"

I say: "About mom". - "Give". When I left, I burst into tears. And the policeman says: “Daughter, don’t cry. Once I got to Shvernik, everything will be fine. " And soon she was released …"